It is being off balance that keeps life changing. Total centering, total balance would only be stasis. All life is continual destruction and healing, over and over again.

So I should not regret upon my hikikomori lifestyle of the past few weeks or my many lost opportunities, but instead I should look upon healing and growing from those negative experiences. After all that can be burnt is burnt, a beautiful phoenix will rise from the ashes.

]]>https://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/change/feed/0daoistotakuStaying at home…https://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/staying-at-home/
https://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/staying-at-home/#respondThu, 12 Jan 2012 07:37:55 +0000http://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/staying-at-home/Continue reading →]]>Staying at home, not doing much, letting each day pass by and by and by… it’s pretty much a hikikomori lifestyle. While I’m certainly not a full on hikikomori, I will have times where each day passes on with me moving around the house like a vegetable in the breeze. The most recent moment being in December, which lasted two weeks, and also another time, these past few days. I actually did stuff over the weekend, which made me decide a lazy day on Monday was well deserved. Well that lazy day on Monday also continued on Tuesday and some of today… so this is basically why I haven’t posted or even worked on all these projects I’ve been planning since last month! What was I doing with my time? Well I’d get up in the late morning, meditate for a short amount of time, game for a short amount of time, watch a little bit of anime, but in general, just spend hours upon hours doing nothing online. I don’t plan on ridding myself of this horrible habit, because I know it will be near impossible, but I want to really cut down on the length of time I spend slipping into the abyss.

With so much time wasted, I have roughly ten days left before I return to school. That means ten days to not exactly complete any projects such as learning another two praying mantis form or master several card sleights, but rather to learn skills and develop a lifestyle that will allow me to gradually pursue my many goals as school progresses into the Spring semester. Granted, there are still a few basic forms, sleights, and etc that I want to complete within these ten days, because I believe they will give me something to efficiently build off of once school starts, so I will just have to see what becomes of my plans during the next few days.

So starting tomorrow! I will make plans to grind through the Chen style Xinjia Yilu form, master one or two foundational card sleights, analyze Beng Bu, begin study on… okay this looks like it’s going to be a lot harder than I thought. Guess I’ll just have to take the last days of my freedom from a very Daoist perspective and just go with the flow.

If waters are placid, the moon will be mirrored perfectly. If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine perfectly.

Becoming still and returning to our natural, original, balanced state seems to be a goal in the Daoist path. In my opinion it sounds similar or is perhaps even the same as enlightenment in Buddhism. Some might say that life is made to be lived with fun and excitement; that this is the road to happiness, but just as much fun as it is to throw pebbles in the pond, only still water can reflect the beauty of the moon. Regular meditation is key to being able to adapt to the challenges that life throws at us. After two weeks of being lazy I’m really working hard on pushing myself into standing meditation each day.

As poetic and philosophical as all this sounds though, it’s just lip service if I don’t accept the fact that I still have ripples in my water, or lose my cool, during the day. After years of Tai Chi (and I’m still just a beginner), I’ve developed superb control of anger, but I still feel incredibly frantic if I am late for something. Just realizing this emotion within me will be the first step towards calming it down.

Today’s meditation on cleansing was very interesting and left me with two distinct impressionable quotes.

Rinsing away dreams is a way of saying that we must not only dispel the illusions and anxieties of our sleeping moments, but those of our waking ones as well.

Recently I realize that whenever I leave my home, I feel as if I’m not present. Perhaps this is just more proof that I am becoming an hikikomori? It’s as if I’m standing there… at the store, the post office, parking lot, etc, but I literally feel as if I’m in a dream; as if I could just face plant the floor and just wake up in my bed moments later. The illusion shrouding around my tired self seems to be masking reality from me sometimes as if it were a thick fog. Being in the moment… waking up the present moment… is certainly something to be worked upon.

After we clear away the obscuring layers of dirt, bodily problems, and delusions, we must be prepared even to clear away the gods themselves so that we can reach the inner One.

Interesting enough, this passage on cleansing the self of impurities… actually ends with saying that even the purities must be cleansed as well in order to reach an even higher level of spirituality. I can’t even imagine what sort of events would lead up to or how it must feel to “clear away the gods themselves” from within our bodies, but until then, I can only strive to clear away the physical and mental impurities first. Proper food and nutrition is certainly a good starting point; eating from a bag of plain salad with chopsticks is not a reparation for having nothing, but frozen chicken the day before.

]]>https://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/36/feed/0daoistotakuKurisu: "Come at me bro!"A New Hopehttps://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/to-further-take/
https://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/to-further-take/#respondMon, 02 Jan 2012 07:28:29 +0000http://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/?p=10Continue reading →]]>To further take advantage of the start of a new year, I’d like to read daily from Deng Ming-Dao’s “365 Tao: Daily Meditations,” and write about what I feel is the most significant from each page.

It is said that if one chooses to pray to a rock with enough devotion, even that rock will come alive.

The first entry in “365 Tao” talks about the hope and optimism present in a new beginning. People become excited about the new long term goals they have set for themselves, but only by staying committed the whole way through, will they achieve that goal. Perhaps the rock may not ever literally sprout arms and legs, but it will be enliven in some spiritual sense if enough hope, effort, and commitment is put into it. So all those real, life changing New Year’s resolutions, make sure you commit to them hard! Day after day! Haru Haru!

]]>https://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/to-further-take/feed/0daoistotakuA Brand New Year!https://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/a-brand-new-year/
https://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/a-brand-new-year/#respondMon, 02 Jan 2012 07:13:43 +0000http://daoistotaku.wordpress.com/?p=6Continue reading →]]>Wow it feels like everything has been completely hectic within the last several months! A relentless Summer, followed by more school than I could handle, then catching the cold twice right as my Winter break began! Now that the New Year is here I hope it will be a chance to bring upon a new me (so corny, yes), but I’m already having a difficult time reviewing all the Taijiquan I’ve forgotten over the school semester let alone finding the chance to really practice. All in all, I hope I can push myself and get my shiznitz together by Lunar New Year!

Getting it all together with the start of the New Year… That’s also kind of the purpose of creating this blog. I realize in the past whenever I made a blog, it was too explore my ability to design websites rather than to actually write about anything. I spent more time editing code and graphics than actually thinking about topics to write about! At best I would just ramble on about my daily tasks… how boring. I could never wrap my head around any real topics… what am I able to write best about… I realize the two biggest things in my life are probably Daoism, which sprouted from my Taijiquan training during High School, and Otaku culture, which sprouted from all the Anime I’ve watched nonstop since before I could wipe my own ass. It seemed like a crazy idea at first to try and write a blog about these two distinct, polar opposite, Yin and Yang topics together, but why not? After all it is these two things I have grown the most passionate about no matter how much they seem to contradict each other. And so with this blog! I hope to blend these two worlds into one! Happy New Year!